Having problem with what appears to be a solid, but has no “volume” under entity info. Once you pop a hole through a cube, for example, it seems to loose its volume. Made the part a component, but still no volume. Are there features under “Solid Tools” in the Pro version that allow you to convert hollows into solids for 3D printing?
The Solid Tools are tools for doing Boolean operations such as Trim, Subtract, and so on. They require that the components/groups being used are considered “solids” by SketchUp. In order to be a solid, every edge must be shared by exactly two faces. No more, no less. This means no internal faces and no holes in the surfaces.
Perhaps you can share your SKP file of the cube with the hole “popped” in it so we can see exactly what you’ve got.
No. All the solid tools are the basic boolean operations. There is no native “fix” tool for poor solid modeling.
But there are some 3rd party extensions to help inspect your “solids”. ThomThom’s Solid Inspector is one.
Keep in mind SketchUp is a surface modeler, not a true solid modeler. So it’s object’s are always “hollow”. SketchUp considers “hollows” closed by surfaces (as described by Dave above,) to be “manifold solids” if they are grouped or made a component instance.
The STL Exporter extension requires the object to be a single level manifold group (I believe.) Ie, no sub-groups nor component instances.
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Hi Dave:
Here is a copy of the part with no volume. The “shaft” part of the hinge on the upper left of the drawing has volume to it. The “tunnel” part in the middle is the problem part which has no volume.
On the far right, is where I separated the shaft part at the hole and made each piece its own group. Each of them does have a volume. Then I re-joined them. Do you think that slicer software will treat them as solids?
Thanks for your help.
hinge.skp (1.3 MB)
Hi Tom,
I sent you a private message.
That central part could be made solid. All three of the parts need help, though. It might be useful to show you directly.
Do you want the tunnel part to be two pieces or just one?
The ‘pin’ part is solid but to make it truly valid you’ll need to orient all of its faces so none of the back-faces are visible [in Monochrome view mode].
The middle part [no volume] has some internal surfaces.
Make a temporary section-cut to see inside it…
These need to be deleted.
After they are removed, then any remaining faceless-edges also need to go.
After all of the remaining faces are properly oriented it’s a valid solid.
The other part is made from two separate ‘containers’ both of which are solid [although the face orientation issue rears its ugly head yet again !]- so they are never going to be a single solid… unless you combine their geometry, delete the internal ‘partition face[s]’ and then fix the wrongly oriented faces issue…
Hi Dave:
Just one. The separated and re-joined version was just done in desperation to get volume showing up in entity info.
I appreciate your help on this.
Hi Dave:
I managed to clean up the tunnel half. Got rid of that internal curved section and used solid inspector. Finally got it saying it was shiny, plus it had volume. What a nice feeling that was.
I will be more aware when pushing and pulling from now on about internal surfaces.
Again thanks for your help.
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